


Parlor Games

by gonfalonier



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Tension, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:42:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonfalonier/pseuds/gonfalonier
Summary: Still stinging from the divorce, Greg receives a visitor who gives him a glimpse of a different sort of love.
Relationships: Greg Lestrade/Jim Moriarty
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Parlor Games

Greg jerks awake as the cab slows to a brake in front of his building. “Give’s a second, will you?” he beseeches the driver, who responds cheerily, “It’s your shilling. Do as you like.”

Greg takes his time figuring out what year it is, what day it is, who’s the PM. He blinks slowly and rolls his shoulders to try to shake the feeling that he’s coming out of hypnosis. After a few healthy yawns and a bit more banter with the cabbie, he pays (with a heavy tip for giving him some peace), and then clips to the door of the building to hurry out of the chilly wet. Inside, though, it’s not much better, with the brick entryway, the concrete staircase; the busted elevator, perpetually open and stinking. Home, sweet home. A dank bucket full of divorcees and sex offenders and asbestos. With a heavy bearing, Greg begins the trudge up to his flat.

The fourth storey is just the two flats, it’s just him and Mr. Arnopolis (reclusive; mean), whose handsome nurse Mohinder comes in four times a week and flirts with Greg if they happen to see each other. Greg’s been known to linger in the hall when Mohinder’s in-house.

Their hall never smells like much, apart from the rising damp that permeates the whole building, but as Greg makes his approach on the stairs he finds himself warmed by kitchen scents. Meat, veg, home-style British food: Greg wonders if his mum’s ghost has finally tracked him down. Could be Mohinder doing a roast for Mr. A; could be Mohinder’s finally done the mean old bugger in and turned him into a fry-up. But it’s a Monday, so Mohinder isn’t here, and once Greg’s on the fourth storey landing it becomes quite clear that whatever’s cooking is cooking in his own flat. He stands dumbly in front of his door and scans it up and down for signs of damage. 

No evidence of force, and yet no one else has a key to the place, not even the wife. (Ex-wife.) It’s been a long enough day, with enough fucking tribulations, that where Greg should be alarmed he can only muster some exasperation. His gears have been grinding all the live-long day on a full roster of criminals and their crimes, and he’s ready to strip down, eat something dreadful, and chase his own tail til he puts out. Instead, he has to deal with this new ration of nonsense.

Finally, he tries the door, and wouldn’t you know it opens right up, just open fucking sesame. Greg scrubs a hand over his face and groans. He steps inside and closes and bolts the door: Whoever’s in his home, such as it is, is going to be trapped in here with him. From the galley kitchen around the corner and out of sight Greg hears something being stirred about in a pan of bubbling oil. 

He shrugs out of his overcoat and hangs it up on the hook, and he’s fishing his keys out of his pocket when he glances down at the hardwood floor and sees something amiss. Further amiss. Two thick brushstrokes of shiny black paint form an X a few paces ahead, in the center of the entryway — a bottleneck, Greg sees now, which neither he nor his guest can avoid if they’re to face each other. 

Greg is about to call out. Maybe this is Sherlock on a relapse, higher than a sparrow’s cunt, making some posh old family recipe in his fucking kitchen. Come to that, it could be Mycroft, fixing up something for the two of them before conveying Greg’s new surveillance assignment on the younger Holmes. He steps forward, the toe of his shoe skirting the lower prongs of the X, and breathes in to speak but it’s in that same moment his guest finds a voice of his own. 

“Sweetheart?” calls the man in the kitchen. “Have you come home?”

Ah. “Hell.”

After a moment, receiving no proper answer, Jim pokes his head around the corner, and Greg greets him with a weary look. “There you are,” Jim says to him with a smile, the smile of the coy housewife. “I was worried I might have to start without you.”

When Greg was still a rookie and the Yard was trying to find the best fit for him, he did a secondment in crisis control. Hostage negotiation, suicide prevention, de-escalation: They told him he had the voice for it. He learned that the daftest shit a cop can do in a crisis is act like a big man. You get tough, you crack down, the other guy just cracks right back and the situation goes to hell. Instead you need to play along, show some ankle. Greg replies to Jim, mildly, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Jim’s mouth breaks into a grin when Greg finally settles on a gambit. He says, “Not to worry, dear. I know you work so hard.”

Cautious of the X, and of the man in his home, Greg stays where he is. He tries for an inch of ground: “Why don’t you come here and give me a proper hello?” For his efforts he gets a look from Jim he’s seen a hundred times from Sherlock. A laughing look, sarcastic but sympathetic. Greg smiles and concedes, “It was worth a try.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Shall I come to you, then?” Just to prove he’s willing, he’s playing along, Greg steps forward and plants his sole on the X. The floor gives. It doesn’t collapse, it doesn’t even crack, but it sinks just enough under Greg’s footfall that he knows he’s made an irreparable mistake. From his place at the hallway’s intersection, Jim shakes his head and cringes. He sucks a breath in that hisses through his back teeth and then says to Greg, “I wouldn’t.”

“It’s a bomb,” Greg tells him. Jim nods, looking rueful, and then finally steps out from around the wall. “Pressure-plate detonation, I’m afraid,” he says. “If you step off that spot -- well, you know the rest.”

Greg closes his eyes. He just wanted to watch some Love Island and have a wank. Christ on the cross. “That’s a shame,” he says. “Is this for working late? Your idea of the doghouse?”

Jim strolls up to him, just to the upper limit of the X, and reaches out to stroke a fingertip down the bridge of Greg’s nose. “Not at all, silly,” he coos. “I know your job is terribly challenging. All those bad men to chase down, I can’t imagine. We’re very lucky to have a man like you on the street.” He stands back and scans Greg over. “You look awful, my love. Let me finish with these carrots and then I’ll bring out something to perk you up.” With a mischievous smile and a light step he disappears around the corner again.

Greg exhales and slumps. All in all, not one of the best nights he’s had. Maybe not the worst, either. After all, this isn’t his first time as a hostage, and his other captors certainly didn’t fix him a meal. Greg takes in another breath and flaps it out through his lips as he rubs the back of his neck, which is starting to prickle with sweat. Best not to dwell on his past experiences in this department, lest he find himself wanting to intentionally set off the detonator under his feet. Instead he focuses on his current options.

Nil. “Shit. Bloody fuck.”

Mobile’s in his coat pocket, out of reach on the hook. There’s a pistol in his bedside table, assuming his guest hasn’t already rifled through and rendered it inert -- god knows how long he’s been here, or if he’s even the only other person in the flat. And if Jim took the trouble to build one form of detonation for this explosive, no doubt he built another. There’s probably a remote on the kitchen counter, right next to the cutting board. Greg grumbles, “Oh, lord,” as he remembers the knife block in the kitchen. This place is about as bare as a picked bone and it’s still full to bursting with weapons.

“Sorry?” says Jim as he comes around the corner again. The sound of sizzling oil has vanished, and now Greg’s ears ring in the quiet. Jim’s holding a bottle of beer and looking serene. “Did you say something, dear? I couldn’t hear you over the racket. You know how I get when I’m fixing supper for my man.”

Greg allows himself one anguished, crumpled expression, and then he reaches out for the bottle being offered. “Nothing important,” he tells Jim. “Just wondering how I got so lucky.” He takes a pull from the beer and damns himself for finding it so good. This wouldn’t be the worst note to go out on.

When his gaze meets Jim’s again, it’s intense. It’s sincere. Jim says to him, in a tone devoid of the evening’s pretense of playful romance, “Detective Inspector, there’s nothing at all I wouldn’t do to keep you by my side.”

“That so?”

“Quite so.”

“Nothing at all. Except trap me on a bomb, as it seems.”

Jim’s eyes crinkle at the corners. Greg supposes it’s a smile. “How else was I supposed to get some time alone with you?” Jim asks, returning once again to the theatrics. “You’re always around those awful friends of yours. I wish you wouldn’t hang about with them, sweetheart. They drag you down.”

“Not all of them. I thought you liked Sherlock.”

Jim’s chin twitches. “Don’t,” he warns. “That name doesn’t belong in this house. In our home.”

“Ah,” says Greg, by way of apology. “Of course. Course, I forgot. You know I forget sometimes.” His back-brain, the factory where his thoughts are rolled out on the production line, whirrs with attempts to piece together the storyline Jim’s scripted for the two of them.

Until this moment, he and James Moriarty have barely exchanged ten words. Greg processed him after the flashy triple break-in, confirmed his identity, collected his fine, small fingerprints. All the while, Jim had his tongue planted firmly in-cheek. His answers were monotone and his eyes scanned, uninterested, the little grey room they kept him in while they waited for his legal representation. Hoping to get a rise out of him, anything at all, Greg took to calling him Jim to his face, took to a friendly tone like they were old college chums. Not even a flinch, he got. Moriarty stayed flat as a flatline. To Greg’s knowledge, they’ve never even made eye contact before today.

Greg’s involvement in the trial was minimal, as well. He stood as a witness for all of fifteen minutes, testified to the facts of the robberies as he understood them, and then was asked to leave. It drove him a bit mad not to be cross-examined -- he thinks he cuts an appealing figure on the stand, and since his first go at Moriarty didn’t pay off he was hoping for another chance to get under his skin. The acquittal rankled him, of course, but he’d seen it coming. Watson was all frothed up about it, but he was a naive little chap: The men in the expensive suits don’t go to prison. Never have. Not even when they burgle the Crown Jewels live on film.

None of this helps Greg in his present predicament. Going on recent events, there’s no reason for him to be in this man’s crosshairs, and certainly not to this extent. Yet here they are in the dingy entryway of a flat in a building that isn’t within 500 feet of a school, and Jim’s looking at him expectantly even though, conversationally, it’s Jim’s turn to speak. Greg hazards a change in topic, since Sherlock is clearly a sore spot. He gestures with the bottle in his hand and says, “Thank you for this. It’s good.”

“Do you like it?” Jim asks, eyes sparkling. “I took a chance. The stuff you had in the fridge was just awful. The worst kind of swill. Don’t they pay you at that big, dangerous job of yours?” This is punctuated with a playful push to Greg’s chest, and if it’s an attempt to throw him off balance it’s unsuccessful. Greg stays put and answers, “Don’t think they’ll ever pay me as much as you’d like them to.” He takes another swallow of beer before he adds, “Darling.”

Jim’s nose wrinkles. He gives a minute shake of his head, prompting Greg to try again: “Baby?” That gets Jim to hold his hand out flat and teeter it -- _Better, but not quite._ Greg breathes out a short laugh through his nose that whistles into the bottle he’s still holding to his lips. This always fucking happens to him with the naughty ones, doesn’t it: They show a bit of charm, and he’s done for. He sucks his teeth and takes another crack at it. “How about -- lessee -- my treasure.”

“Oh,” says Jim, fanning his fingers out over his own lips. “That is _it_.”

“You like that?”

“I do. You’re very good at this.”

“Good enough to make you regret blowing me up?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “You’re not dead yet, goofus. Now go on. Keep talking sweet to me while I fix you a plate.”

As soon as Jim’s out of sight again, Greg allows himself to despair. His legs are getting numb, so he bends his knees to a dip and carefully draws himself back up to standing. He does it a few times, and every time he does he thinks about what he might have done to deserve this. Established: He hasn’t done anything to injure Moriarty directly. Hasn’t insulted him in any meaningful way. Jim had recoiled at Sherlock’s name, though, and maybe that’s what’s happening here, maybe this is some roundabout way to get at Holmes. If that’s the case he’ll be happy to tell Jim he’s wasting his time. If it meant he could witness Greg being violently dismembered, Sherlock wouldn’t stop for red lights.

There’s a good chance Greg has put some of Moriarty’s operatives away. Maybe that’s what this is about, some fucked up way of trying to win Greg over, get him on the take. If Greg survives this encounter it may end with Jim offering him a substantial sum to keep him fat, happy, and blind. It wouldn’t be the first time Greg’s been bribed — first time, though, that his own life has been part of the bargain — but Greg is proud to say he’s never been bent, and whether he lives or dies today he’s going to stay clean.

In the kitchen, Moriarty is humming, chattering out a few na-na-nas to a tune that Greg can’t place, and it doesn’t matter anyway. For all the calories Greg’s just expended trying to profile the guy in his home, Jim remains an enigma and he’ll stay that way forever. He doesn’t need the money people pay him to kill off the obstacles and annoyances in their lives, but he takes it anyway so he can have pissing power over them. He doesn’t value his own life one jot, but he still travels with a security crew led by a bodyguard who looks like a violent animal the circus forgot to kill. Whenever Greg makes his shabby attempt at profiling, he finds one question holds more weight than all others: Does this person want order, or do they want chaos? Jim Moriarty, he guesses, wants both, either, and only on his terms. The thought passes through Greg’s mind that Moriarty runs warm, physically warm to the touch, just from the energy it takes to keep his plates spinning and his mind satisfied. Sounds exhausting. Greg rubs his eyes and finds they’re starting to ache.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight, my love.” Without a sound, Jim has appeared again from around the corner. He’s holding a plate of what looks like roasted chicken and carrots and parsnips. It looks damned good, whatever it is. He answers Jim, “Just a bit tired, treasure. Long day. I was looking forward to sitting down to dinner with you.” He nods toward the plate. “Looks like you’ve outdone yourself.” Jim’s mouth curves in a beatific smile.

With his bare fingers, Jim plucks a golden slice of carrot from the plate. “You work too hard,” he fusses. “They take you for granted there. Open up, dear.” Greg does. He parts his lips and extends his tongue obediently to take the bit of food Moriarty is offering him. Jim presses it down firmly onto Greg’s tongue and then pushes back until his thumb is entirely in Greg’s mouth. “There we are,” he encourages. He continues to speak, soft and soothing, as Greg keeps his mouth loose around the intrusion. “One day, they’re going to wake up and you won’t be there. One day, they’re going to regret the way they used you. All of them. And it’s going to be so bad.” 

Jim begins to withdraw his thumb, and Greg has the presence of mind to suck on it before it slips away. It earns him a heated look, and Jim says to him, “Later, darling. Have to get you fed first.” Obligingly, Greg chews the carrot and swallows it, and it’s very, very good. Jim asks if he’d like another and Greg nods, and it goes on like that. Greg eats, drawing each morsel into his mouth from the fingers of the man who’s wired his home to kill him. Jim watches him and talks. “I’d keep you in a stable,” he muses, finishing a thought he didn’t begin aloud. Greg asks, “A stable?” But Jim shushes him with another bite of food. This isn’t a conversation. “Stable you, wash and curry you every day, exercise you in the sun. I’d make you sweat, the way you’re meant to. I’d work you.” He seems to linger on the thought as he sucks his own fingertips clean. He glances down at the near-empty plate and says brightly, “You know? That’s not terrible, is it.”

“Not half,” Greg agrees. The horse talk, he dismisses. The man’s insane, after all, and that’s all right. Anyway, wouldn’t be the first time Greg’s faced down a lunatic with a riding crop. He flexes his knees again and offers to Jim, “Any chance of dessert, treasure? You always do up something lovely.”

“Greedy,” admonishes Jim with a smile. He reaches out to cup Greg’s chin and thumb over his lips. “I haven’t even had mine yet.”

Greg has stopped trying to understand why Jim Moriarty is here. It’s done him no good so far: It’s done no one any good at any point. To understand him, to predict his movements or divine his motives, is a fucking snipe hunt. Maybe Jim has come to earth from hell to cull the human herd. Maybe he’s here in this apartment because God wants Greg to suffer.

His ankles hurt, and his hips, and his shoulders, and his neck, and his eyes. Truth be told, that carrot was still a bit hot from the pan and it burned his tongue. He wants to sit down. He doesn’t want to die, but he’d love to just die already. He’s about to say something, but when he blinks he finds that Jim is no longer standing before him. Instead, Greg looks down to find he’s gone to his knees and set the plate aside. “What’s this, then?” Greg asks. “Another surprise for me? I don’t know if I can take it, luv.”

Jim replies to him, “You’ll like this one,” and licks his lips before rubbing them together and turning them dark. Jim’s kneeling just at the border of the X on the floor. Greg has no idea how these things work, the bomb or the attention he’s about to receive. What’s the radius of the detonator? Just contained under the paint on the floor, the width of his two feet? If Greg says no to this, if Jim rises to his feet, will the loss of pressure trigger the plate? And what exactly the fuck is this? What’s about to happen? Jim’s too far away to blow him -- Greg would never think so highly of himself -- but he’s looking up at Greg with the smile of a wicked, hungry creature. Greg hears himself say, “You’re fucking kidding me.”

No part of this encounter has imbued Greg with erotic energy. He’s not the type to get the horn off adrenaline: After the ‘05 bombings, he had to dismiss a handful of constables for taking sexual advantage at the scene of survivors who were grateful to be survivors. It happens sometimes, just not to him. No, it’s just the regular stuff that does it for Greg, nothing weird. Regular stuff like the woman in that one tv advertisement who’s wearing high heels with jeans, or the smell of his mates when they’re all huddled in the scrum. Regular stuff like a lad on his knees with his lips parted and receptive. Jim’s unblinking eyes are trained on him like a rifle sight, and they’re saying to him _Let me_. “Go on, then,” Greg grants him. “Go on.”

Jim goes on. He turns his gaze back to Greg’s flies and reaches out to unfasten them. 

“Is this why you were so impatient for me getting home today, treasure? You must’ve been all day planning this.”

“All day? Oh no, my love. I shopped early -- your cupboard was bare, darling, you’re no good at all without me to look after you. And then I had some girlfriends over at lunchtime, a bit of wine and gossip, and with all of us together it took no time at all to wire the bomb.” As Jim speaks, he parts the flaps of Greg’s zip and gives the covered flesh behind it a few experimental prods. “And I’ve been idle ever since, apart from the cooking. I kept my eye on the news, of course, in case something dreadful happened and they needed my hero to fly in.”

“No emergencies today, pet.”

“Lucky me.”

Lucky. Greg’s a day between showers. He’s been sitting most of the day -- performance evaluation time -- and he knows he’s got to be a bit damp, a bit ripe where Jim’s touching him. It occurs to him that his quiet day may have been courtesy of the man now feeling him up: If Moriarty can wreak enough damage to bring London to heel, he can surely keep the criminal element docile long enough to pull off whatever game is playing out in this flat.

“You don’t make it easy for a lady, do you?” Jim grunts as he hauls out Greg’s cock in an exaggerated show of effort. Greg’s soft as a washrag still, but there’s some work going on under the surface. The builders are starting to build. Jim pets him, hefting the cockshaft in one hand and stroking the snout with two fingers of the other. “C’mon, little fella,” Jim coos to him. “Let’s see you.” He closes his hand around him and begins to pump in slow draws. Greg watches him, feeling hot-cheeked and heavy-limbed. Perhaps Jim’s forgotten the rest of him is even here.

“Have you ever done this at work?” Jim asks him. No luck, then.

“What’s that, sweetheart. Stroked off?”

Jim oohs at him and calls him naughty. “Listen to you. Love it when you use that kind of talk with me. So have you? Have you stroked off at your big inspector’s desk?”

“I have, yeah.” It’s the truth. The wife would call him sometimes in a mood, or some dream or other from the night before would leave him with some unfinished business. More than once, however, he was inspired by a damned good showing from Sherlock fucking Holmes, something of which he’s not particularly proud. Jim would certainly hate to hear it, too, and Greg doesn’t want to go hacking him off right now. “Better with you in the driver’s seat, though.”

Jim allows himself a prim, vain little smile, but Greg knows better than to think it matters one jot what he or anyone else thinks of the technique being displayed. This isn’t sex. If Greg tries to put a name to what this is, if he calls it by its truthful name, that’s it for him, he’ll lose. Instead he curls his toes inside his shoes to maintain his balance and keep his focus steady.

The two men are quiet together for a few long beats. Jim appears rapt as he watches Greg’s cock swell to erection. It’s something Greg’s proud of, really, that at his age this is an arena where he’s still tick-tock reliable. Jim’s lips are parted, and the glistening tip of his tongue is roaming in the space between his teeth. Every now and then he swallows like his mouth is flooding. It’s hard to say if the man enjoys anything at all besides obedience and munitions, but maybe Greg should add this to the list. It could be that Jim’s regretting the distance he’s placed between the two of them now.

“Wish you could get a bit closer,” Greg says, “get your little mouth on me the way I like.”

“Brute.”

“You love it.”

“You’ll be the death of me, you know.”

“Likewise.”

Jim has fine hands, fine like the sculptures Greg and the wife saw on their honeymoon in Athens, with slender fingers and oval palms. With the hand he isn’t using as a piston, he’s collecting the fluid that’s gathering at the tip of Greg’s cock whenever the foreskin is drawn up and closes into a moist rosette. The stuff drips onto Jim’s palm in droplets on obscene, sticky strands, and like a child with the remains of an ice cream Jim brings his hand to his face and licks it up.

“Taste all right, my treasure?”

“You taste like a big, dumb animal.”

“That a yes?”

“Oh, yes.” Another few pumps of his hand and Greg’s dick is quivering. Still encased in his underwear, his balls are fattening up in preparation. Jim adds, reflectively, to himself, “Next time, I’ll have you up on the block. A proper meal. Salt you and soak you, leave you til you’re rather tender.”

“Christ.”

“Hush now.”

“Fuck. Jim.”

“Do as you’re told.”

Greg does, and without protest. He lets his head drop back as he lurches toward climax. What’ll they say about him, if this is how he goes? What sort of obituary notice will there be for him? If he’s blown to flinders after getting rubbed off in his entryway by this fucking evil dwarf. Well, maybe no one will be able to tell all that from the from shreds of flesh and shards of bone. _Little Molly Hooper, standing over a pile of sludge that was formerly DI Greg Lestrade, pronounces, “This man ejaculated mere moments before his death.”_ Greg huffs out a laugh, a genuine giggle, and Jim says to him, “It’s nice, isn’t it. A chance to enjoy yourself, no distractions, no meddling tall men to interrupt your bliss.”

“No tall men at all,” Greg laughs, and in return Jim scoffs and calls him cheeky. Greg might also argue that striving for orgasm with visions of his own death might not be everyone’s definition of bliss, but then, this is Moriarty. Hardly the man on the Clapham omnibus.

He hazards a glance down his own body to see how he’s faring and the answer seems to be quite well indeed. He has the sort of cock that stiffens to regimental straightness and points away from his body like a missile. It looks good in Jim’s hand, ruddy, smooth, dark with hot blood. Christ, he’d love it if Jim were close enough to just give it a fucking kiss, just a bit of a suck right there on the end. He’d love to watch this lad swallow, but maybe not swallow it all.

Jim’s been speaking this whole time, apparently. Greg just now realizes. Low, unobtrusive, hypnotic; probably nonsense. Greg tunes into him just in time to hear Sherlock’s name. Uh oh. Uh oh? “...Sherlock Holmes, two bloodstocks neck-and-neck around and around the track until one of us drops. But that isn’t so, is it, my beloved.”

“No,” gasps Greg. He has no idea what he’s answering to. He’s about to fucking come.

“Very good. Oh, that’s good. Here I thought Sherlock and I were meant to be eternal asymptotes.” Greg hasn’t a single Scooby sodding Doo what this lunatic is talking about, but he still gives a frantic nod and a grunt of encouragement. Jim’s hand is doing him just right, like _just_ right. “What a bright man I have,” Jim coos at him, to the unsheathed head of his cock. “We happen to share, Sherlock and I, one point of intersection. One glitch in the data, one error that derails us both. Do you know what it is, my love? Can you guess?”

Greg’s mouth is hanging open as he pants his every breath. Unbidden, a clear drop of saliva escapes from under his tongue, slides over his slack bottom lip, and lands on his own dick just in time for Jim to slick it over his skin with his fingers. “Fuck. Fucking Christ, is it me? Hope it’s not me.”

“It’s you,” Jim confirms with a grin. “It is you.”

Well, that’s about the last thing Greg wants to hear. Unfortunately, as with most affairs of the cock, it’s simply too late to stop the inevitable. “Shit Hell.” His shaft plumps in Jim’s hand, the only warning Jim gets before the first warm jet of stuff lands on the dome of his forehead. Greg swears a blue streak. He hasn’t painted someone’s face since before he was married. Jim takes it beautifully, too, like this is his favorite thing in the world. Like Greg’s just given him a box marked Givenchy.

And then the show is over. Jim releases his grip and Greg’s cock begins its retreat. Jim wastes no time on sentiment: He plucks a handkerchief from the pocket of his jeans and cleans his face off in a few efficient swipes. (Jeans, this man is wearing. Denim. As though this is their third date.) After a pause for consideration, however, he does suck the fabric clean.

When he rises to his feet, the housewife is gone. The lad’s gone, too, the one with the hunger for cock. Even Jim has disappeared, along with the rapport Greg swore he was at some point building. Now there’s just James Moriarty, looking stylishly disheveled and completely out of place. Moriarty’s eyes roam over Greg and then he tsks: “You’re a mess, Inspector.”

If he were a crying man, Greg would fall out into a bawl. Instead, he slumps, because that’s the sort he is. “What’s to stop me,” he says to Jim, “from stepping off this spot and taking out the both of us.”

“Oh, please do. I double-dare you.”

Greg’s fingers feel heavy. Christ have mercy, his dick is still out. He takes a minute to square himself away, and then -- who fucking cares? -- he closes the space between himself and Jim.

Silence follows, and Jim looks at him expectantly, his eyebrows raised and mouth fighting a smile. There never fucking was a bomb.

Greg closes his eyes and says, “Right.”

“Well, I couldn’t have you barging in and ruining your surprise, you big ape.”

There isn’t an ounce of tension left in Greg’s body, not for fight nor flight. Boneless, he leans against the wall and then slides to the floor. A thought occurs to him, and not fleetingly, that maybe the most fucked thing about this madness is that all the while, Jim could’ve actually sucked him off.

“And anyway,” Jim continues, “I’d hate to jeopardize your chances with that tasty nurse across the way. He’s all in on you, isn’t he. And why shouldn’t he be?” Moriarty pats Greg on the cheek and then tugs his phone out of his back pocket to check it. Apparently it isn’t interesting enough to send him off. He puts it away, turns, and crouches in front of Greg. “I’m just kidding, you know,” he says, looking into Greg’s bleary eyes. “Daddy won’t have you cheating. Not with Mohinder, not with the woman at the newsstand, not with the young man at the butcher, you naughty thing, and not with Sherlock Holmes.”

“There isn’t,” Greg mumbles, a half-phrase, as if he needs to justify himself.

“Yes there is,” Jim answers primly. He stands again, this time with an air of finality. “And I shan’t have it, do you understand, not from either of you.” He turns his gaze from Greg to the X on the floor, which he palpates with the outstretched toe of his shoe. It gives beneath the sole, like the freshness button on a jar of jam, but again, nothing comes of it. He steps forward fully onto the center of the mark and bounces on it with a grin. “Can you believe? It does that naturally. It’s the little things, isn’t it.”

“Fuck off.”

“All right. Impatient.” Jim smooths a hand over his hair, then checks his phone again, then approaches the door. His back is still to Greg when he says, “If I do find, my treasure, that you’ve been unfaithful to me, I don’t think I need to tell you. If I find out, I won’t bother with dinner. You’ll be in the doghouse, for sure.” He opens the door with a flourish, a little vamp. At least someone’s having fun. Over his shoulder he adds, “If you thought your first divorce was acrimonious, Inspector, you’ve never met a bitch like me. Ciao.”

The door swings to behind him, but it doesn’t entirely close. With the final ounce of energy left within him, Greg pushes himself up and shuts it and locks it up tight, not that it matters. He collapses again, because he can no longer hold himself upright. He reaches up to his coat on the hook and gropes until he finds his phone in the pocket. There’s a calendar reminder that the rent’s about to come due, and there are two texts from Sherlock Holmes. Greg mutters, “Bloody timing with this one.”

_Your wife thinks the two of us are having an affair SH_

_We are not SH_

No context, of course, but even in his clouded state Greg can figure what’s happened. A photo showing him and Holmes together looking chummy -- a fucking trick of the light, that -- scrawled with some jealous threat.

Greg sets the phone on the floor and bats it so it skitters down the hall toward the kitchen, then he lets his head thunk back against the door. What he wouldn’t give for the bomb to have been real. To no one he says, “Why would I --? _She_ cheated on _me_.”

He’ll have to stand sometime. At some point he’ll have to rise and survey the damage Jim caused, look for evidence of missing items, and then recode his gun safe, maybe get a new bank card, who fucking knows what else. For now, he allows himself list to one side til he’s lying down, eye level with the X. He could sleep here, if his wired, worn out body ever lets him sleep again.

And to think, he’d just been talking to his mates about getting a big fucking dog.


End file.
